Francesco's Song: Love, War and Rememberance: A Novel Based on True Events, by C. M. Furio
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Francesco's Song: Love, War and Rememberance: A Novel Based on True Events, by C. M. Furio
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Set amidst the drama of Fascist Italy, Francesco’s Song is the gripping story of one man’s struggle to survive. Based on family history, C.M. Furio tells the poignant story of young Francesco as he grows up in the small seaside town of Mola di Bari. The saga of birth, love and death in rural southern Italy unfolds as Italy becomes involved in the cataclysm of world events. Francesco’s carefree youth ends when, the oratory of Mussolini and the false sense of patriotism seduces him and he joins the military police of the Italian armed forces, the Carabinieri Reali. Stationed in Yugoslavia and later in Milan, everything he treasures is threatened as he confronts events during the war and witnesses firsthand the destruction of his homeland. Fleeing from the occupying Nazi, Francesco is sheltered by sympathizers of a growing resistance movement. He enters the darkest period of his life. where his only dream is to be reunited with his family and the love of his life, Francesca. Based on letters and war-time documents found in the author’s family home Francesco’s Song is a moving portrayal of the struggles of the Italian people during the war years and the customs that bound them. It is the story of an immigrant who never lost the love for his homeland and who valued family above all else.
Francesco's Song: Love, War and Rememberance: A Novel Based on True Events, by C. M. Furio- Amazon Sales Rank: #2730836 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .97" w x 6.00" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 388 pages
Review Midwest Review of Books"Impressively well written and deftly drawing from real-life sources, "Francesco's Song" by Colomba M. Furio-Spigner is an exceptionally crafted novel and an absorbing read from beginning to end. Indeed, "Francesco's Song" is one of those works of literary fiction that will linger on in the mind and memory of the reader long after the novel itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Very highly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections."Small Press Bookwatch: January 2016"A work of deftly crafted fiction that is inspired by letters and war-time documents that author C. F. Furio found in her family home, "Francesco's Song" is an inherently fascinating read from first page to last and firmly established C. F. Furio as an exceptionally gifted novelist. Highly recommended for community library General Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Francesco's Song" is also available in a Kindle edition ($9.00)."HSN : Historical Novels Review: May 2016 C. M. Furio's Francesco's Song follows the fortunes of a young man named Francesco whose life mirrors the experiences of many thousands of young Italians in the years leading up to the Second World War.Francesco is born in a small seaside town in southern Italy and as a young man falls under the spell of insurgent leader and future dictator Benito Mussolini. Francesco joins the army, theCarabinieri Reali and is posted to Yugoslavia and Milan. His wartime experiences roughly acquaint him with the grim realities beneath patriotic slogans that originally fired his imagination.Furio based the story on elements of her own family history, and this certainly aids the general air of verisimilitude in Francesco's Song.The characters are well-realized, and the young man's wartime experiences are memorably unsentimental. The end-paper photos and documents further add a touching personal dimension to the story.
About the Author C.M. Furio, Colomba M. Furio-Spigner, is a technologist and educator. She holds a doctorate from New York University, where she researched the cultural background of Italian immigrant women and its impact on the unionization movement in New York City Garment Industry and published several scholarly articles on this topic. She was an IT professional on Wall Street for over ten years where she worked as a Programmer, Systems Analyst and Project Manager before making a transition into teaching. She was an educator with the New York City Department of Education and CUNY and continues to teach part-time. An avid photographer and artist, she lives on Long Island with her husband and two sons.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Deeply evocative By Avid Reader This is a deeply informed and loving look at the everyday life of ordinary people in rural Italy before and during WWII. I grew so fond of the main "characters" (closely based on the author's parents) while reading that I missed their company after finishing their story. Here-- in realistic detail portrayed with the drama of fiction-- are the pranks and games of carefree children, the cultural rituals of their close-knit families in good times and hardship, and the worries and doubts of a population edging toward a war that changed everything. In its aftermath, when the central couple move to the United States with their toddler daughter, the culture shock they experience will be yours as well, because you have so truly lived their childhoods, their adolescence, their courtship, and the painful separation of war. Highly recommended!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Francesco's Song- A story of courage, loyalty, love and perseverance in time of war. By albert talamo Ms. Furio writes a story that is very close to her heart. Francesco's Song is the story of her family in the years preceding, during and after WWII in the village of Mola, near Bari on the southeastern coast of Italy. It is also the story of the political events that will change forever the lives of the people of Mola and Italy.In 1928, when Italy "fell in love with Mussolini, Francesco was a little boy who went to school and played in a care-free world. We see Francesco going to the movies to watch his hero, the cow-boy Tom Fix, or bicycling to his grandfather's farm, or playing imaginary games of heroes and villains among the ruins of the Norman castle. But these creative, and at times, braggadocio boys, will be swept away by the cataclysmic events of WWII.Francesco becomes a Carabiniere Reale and is sent to Slovenia where he experiences the horrors of war. Upon his return to Italy, he stays in Milan, where a partisan family protects him from the Germans at great risk to themselves. In Milan Francesco meets people who have different values from the ones he grew up with in the little village of Mola. They are artists, communists, independent women who scorn social conventionsand risk their lives fighting with the partisans. Francesco is deeply moved by their kindness toward him. He is a deeply changed man, but he wants to return to Mola to see his family and Francesca, his childhood sweetheart and the love of his life. On his long journey home he sees the devastation of his country. Entire villages have been abandoned. People are hiding for fear of reprisal from Germans and Fascists after Italy signed the Armistice in 1943. But, when Francesco finally returns, Mola appears to him to be stifling and conventional. His aspirations for something greater will finally bring him and his young family to New York.Ms. Furio has written a gripping story. The reader develops sympathy for the characters as he or she sees them grow up and develop into adults.Her thorough research about the difficult and conflicting history of Italy at that time, is based also on letters that her family brought to America.Francesco's Song is also Ms. Furio's song. A song that grew with her.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Life in Italy before, during and after WWII, personal yet wide appeal By Italophile Book Reviews Ever wonder what it was like to live in Italy before and during WWII? This book gives the best idea I've come across, probably because the author based it all on her own family's experiences and accounts of other people they knew personally.Francesco's Song is only lightly fictionalized, so the truth shines through about the author's father, Francesco, and her mother, Francesca. They were children near Bari in Italy's south when Mussolini and his black shirted Fascists came to power.The brainwashing of the children began early, and the Fascists worked hard to build a cult around their leader, Benito Mussolini. It is interesting to see that the older people were often more skeptical of the political bombast."By 1929, when Italy was having its love affair with Il Duce, Francesco was eight years old."Because the story follows her parents, and Italy, from 1928 through to the post war era, we get to see how the children grew up to see the harsh reality of their leaders' militarism. They were left with great skepticism of any political leadership and any -ism.Francesco is the main person we follow from a Fascism inculcated childhood in a household run most of the time by his mother, a white widow, as the neighbors called a woman whose husband spent most of the year abroad to earn a living."So many men in town had left. Some had gone to South America, to cities in Argentina and Brazil, but Francesco's father had gone, like so many others, to New York City."We go with Francesco to young adulthood when he falls in love with Francesca. That is when we pick up her story, and learn that she struggles more under the paternalistic traditions of Italy, and especially of southern Italy. As her mother says:"You'll get married and you'll have a family. What do you need school for?"Marriage comes young for a woman in that sort of society."At eighteen years of age, Francesca had already received marriage proposals from several suitors who had sent go-betweens to her mother's house."Then comes Francesco's required military service. Like all clever young men, he chose his branch of the military just before getting drafted, so he served in the prestigious Carabinieri Reali.That brought him to Dobrovna, Yugoslavia, where fought and suffered from the violence, with traces of that suffering trailing him all his life long. The life of the soldier is well described. The author makes good use of her father's letters to his fidanzata in this section of the book.The post war period is interesting for the cultural frustration Francesco suffered when he returned to the very socially and religiously repressive south of Italy. Like all people who've spent time away from a repressive society, or who enjoyed some relief from it, like Francesca during the difficult war years, it was impossible to be happy back in that environment."Once away from the small universe of his childhood, his eyes had been opened and now he was not so quick to accept what had once seemed carved in stone. This was true especially regarding the church..."That's when the choice came to go either to the north of Italy, or abroad. Since both of them had fathers and even a sibling in the United States already for years, their emigration to America was simpler than trying to find a good job anywhere in Italy.The description of how looking for work in Italy operated in the 1950s rings true with my experiences when living there in the 1980s. Exams, competitions, recommendations, friends of friends needed, political juice... What I hear from friends in Italy, the situation has still not improved much, and it still pushes talented young Italian to emigrate.The story is told in the classic omniscient narrative style, but it is done with a light touch, and at times the author limits the point of view of the narration to just one character. It is a wonderful choice for this story. It lets us get to know so many interesting people intimately.Don't worry if you are not up on your WWII history. The author fills the reader in on what he needs to know along the way. The result is a very personal story that also has a wide appeal.Francesco and Francesca's story is theirs, and it is also the story of thousands of other Italians who chose to leave Italy after WWII. If you have relatives among the Italian diaspora of that era and age, reading this book is a good way of connecting with their experiences.Please visit my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews. I received a review-copy of this book. This is my honest review.
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